20 Years of Traditional Home: McBournie and Faudree

Slide 1 Of 20 Years of Traditional Home: McBournie and Faudree

As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, it has been a natural thing to remember and appreciate the many incredibly talented designers we have featured through the years.

It is possible that no designers have been published more often in Traditional Home than Gary McBournie of Boston and Charles Faudree of Tulsa, both of whom figured prominently in our anniversary issue. Their styles aren't at all similar -- although, as we invariably find to be true of the best designers, each creates wonderfully comfortable, inviting rooms for his clients.

What they also have in common is that our readers love their work. Here are two of their latest projects that we are very pleased to feature.

The house that Beth and Michael Jones bought in Weston, Massachusetts was built in the 1880s as a carriage house and barn, a common beginning for what are now some of Weston's prettiest abodes. Through the years and various remodelings, the structure has retained its original peaked entry dormer, stone pilasters, and cupola.

Architect Patrick Ahearn designed a new rear wing for the house and oversaw a reconfiguring of the interior. Early in the construction process, Beth also hired Boston interior design talent Gary McBournie, whose work epitomizes casual sophistication -- exactly the look that Beth wanted for her home.

The large living room is defined by a cheerful assemblage of reds and golds, colors that play up the warm textures of Beth's folk-art treasures, such as a metal horse sculpture, formerly a weather vane, that is now stabled on the mantel. Naturally lit during daytime hours by newly installed windows, the room's walls glow in a wheat-colored glaze.

McBournie created two seating areas that are pulled together by a flat-weave wool carpet and a crewel embroidery fabric covering two curvy chairs on either side of the rust-colored sofa. Facing off in front of the fireplace are matching sofas in nubby white-and-gold cotton. Instead of a coffee table, an ottoman from the Joneses' former home found new life topped with worn tufted leather.

At the opposite end of the large space that also contains the living room is a dining area. Around the reclaimed-wood trestle-base dining table, chairs in rust-colored Ultrasuede add surprise with a contrasting linen fabric on their backs. The large iron chandelier reminds homeowner Beth Jones of a wagon wheel.

A pattern of striking interlocking circles stenciled across the walls of the entry hall often leads visitors to assume that this striking motif sparked the house's decorative plan. But the opposite is true. Part of the original barn, the two-story space had enormous volume and required a pattern that was gutsy and full of personality. McBournie settled on a simple geometric pattern executed in a complex color scheme of red, blue, gold, and yellow to deliver a warm welcome.

"This space was always a question mark that none of us wanted to tackle," says McBournie. "We left it alone and hoped that it would tell us what it wanted. An antique rug directed its pattern, and we applied bright colors that were tempered with an umber wash so it didn't have a psychedelic look."

Although its fittings are all new, the kitchen was made to recall the past with subtle barn references. Exposed beams on the vaulted ceiling enhance the imperfect texture of a lighting fixture crafted from antique iron. The long center island is painted in the red of a distressed barn. With its beadboard construction, turned legs, and aged wood top, it could easily pass as an antique worktable.

The breakfast nook nestles into a window bay, the alcove given architectural interest with a pair of antique wooden brackets found by Beth at a flea market. Chairs were slipcovered in tweed and banded in red piping. The table and chairs rest on a hand-braided rug that forms a series of circles.

A mélange of pretty fabrics gives the master bedroom visual interest. Silk panels over embroidered sheers at the windows, a quilted coverlet and plaid skirt on the bed, and a cut-velvet upholstered bench all work together for a serene ambience. A sofa in tweed cotton sports soft cotton pillows.

Ask Gary McBournie to describe his style, and he'll tell you he doesn't have one. "I'm not formulaic, and I don't want to do the same design over and over," he says. But his work does have certain distinct aspects that we count on. His infectious fusion of happy palettes, charming geometrics, and fresh spins on antiques-all polished to casual perfection-consistently wow us. That livable but sophisticated approach has made McBournie such a favorite at Traditional Home that his rooms have been seen here again and again, first appearing in our May '93 editon.

In addition to the range of elegantly casual client projects and his own abodes that this Boston talent has shared with our readers, he has seamlessly bridged Traditional Home from one millennium to the next. When it came time to produce the magazine's 10th anniversary issue in 1999, we called on McBournie to introduce a fresh Y2K update to a living room re-created from our inaugural year. In 2000, when Traditional Home brought together a team of esteemed designers for our Built for Women showhouse, we chose him to design the grand entry foyer of the Manhattan residence.

Best known for his toile touch and French forte, Charles Faudree was asked to bring both of those trademarks to the design of Julie Nickel's house in Tulsa. "The house is one of Tulsa's most beautiful, gracious old homes. It's a big three-story that was built from 1929 to 1932 by an oil baron. Over the years, it had fallen into disrepair. Julie wanted to bring it back to its original elegance and beyond, but with French style," the designer explains.

Accompanying the living room's formal silk-swagged draperies, gilt mirror, and three-tier crystal chandelier are furnishings scaled and cushioned for comfort. A pair of long, beefy sofas are as appropriate for an afternoon nap for the kids and their parents (the fat upholstered rolled arms seem destined to cradle heads) as they are for seating well-heeled guests at a glittering charity fund-raiser. Beefiness doesn't trump beauty, either-the roomy sofas feature detailing with darker welting and dainty silk frogs on their skirts, rendering them Francophile-friendly.

Panels above the dining room doors and mantel were hand-painted by local artist Janet Davis to go with the room's soft celery palette. The crystal and rock-crystal chandelier is custom. Cut velvet upholsters new French-style chairs at the custom table.Lavish embroidered silk draperies are crowned with bespoke gilded cornices. All plasterwork is original.

Illuminated by an antique tole chandelier, a vintage drop-leaf table accommodates the breakfast room's banquette and new chairs. Candlesticks from the Paris flea market adorn the table, and antique garden prints add interest to the walls.

Florals and stripes knit the master bedroom together, while a plaid skirt calls attention to the bed. A custom loveseat joined by a pair of antique French chairs and a coffee table-all from the Paris flea market-create a comfortable sitting area in front of the spacious window. Antique porcelain cherub lamps rest on new gilded end tables.The chandelier is original.

"Except for a few spaces, there's nothing casual about the home's design, but it is still very comfortable," Faudree says. "That's what makes it so livable."

No Faudree design is complete without his signature touch of toile, as found in this bedroom, where it drapes extravagantly from a Louis XVI-style bed. An antique vanity at the foot of the bed is accompanied by a French chair from the Paris flea market.

An antique chest was custom-painted and topped with an antique mirror.

"I'm a big believer in the mix," Charles says. "A single object on a tabletop or a single work of art on the wall can be nice, but for me, mixing collections provides the most excitement. Instead of grouping the pieces from only one collection, which typically limits you to 'like' objects, I like to combine different collections to ensure a mix of textures and shapes and even history, to increase the visual interest of the arrangement.

"The mix in the girl's bedroom shown here is more about pattern than collectibles. Pink toile on the little chair and bed curtains mixes with stripes on the wall, a hand-painted floral design on the commode, and florals on the lamp and lampshade. Start with a pivotal fabric, then mix other patterns of different scales from the same color family."

If you sense a kinship between Charles Faudree and Traditional Home, you're right. The Tulsa interior designer and the 20-year-old magazine grew up together, rising to national prominence at around the same time, leaning on each other to get there, and refining their looks as the years marched by. Faudree's work first appeared in the magazine 19 years ago, as TH toddled into its second year of existence. That story (February 1990) featured a Tulsa home he designed. Even then, he wielded a highly decorative style lush with objects and patterns for an "elegantly eclectic environment that is at once French and English, formal and casual, feminine and masculine." The very next issue, April 1990, served up more -- a 200-year-old saltbox he had transplanted to Tulsa as his own home.

Over the next two decades, we featured nine more Faudree designs, seven of them being his own homes. (The antique saltbox was short-lived for Faudree, a rolling stone who declares that each new house "is the best and my last!") Three times his own homes made our covers: in April 1991, and for Holiday issues in 2000 and 2002. We watched as his fondness for English florals waned and his French style bloomed in full. In May 1995, he was a TH Design Award winner. Like the magazine he grew up with, this traditionalist is still evolving.